Late 1980s: Career beginnings

Thu Minh participated in some musical activities and small musical contests during her school days. After graduating from middle school, she studied to be a professional ballet dancer at The Dance School of Ho Chi Minh City.

At the age of 15, Thu Minh first learned of the contest on Broadcast of Ho Chi Minh when she saw it from a banner. She did not reveal her plan to enter the contest to her family and registered on her own. However, when she reached the final round, she was eliminated by the contest jury after they learned she was too young to qualify for the competition. With her family's support, she returned to the competition at the age of 16. Thu Minh was the youngest contestant, impressing audiences with two Vietnamese songs, "Bóng cây Kơ-nia" ("The Shadow of the Kapok Tree") and "Tình ca cho em" ("Love song for you"). She won a gold medal as the first prize.^[1]

Almost 20 years later, "Tình ca cho em" was revealed to be a song that its author, musician Nguyen Nam, wrote for Thu Minh specifically before she attended the contest.^[4][5]

1990s – early 2000s: Diversity

Thu Minh's win did not immediately translate into widespread commercial success. She performed many classic songs, such as "Thousand purple revenue" by Hoang Trong, "The Shadow of the Kapok Tree" by Phan Huynh Dieu, "Giọt mưa thu" by Dang The Phong, "Thuyền viễn xứ" by Pham Duy, and "Thời hoa đỏ" ("The Red Flower") by Thanh Tung.

She has noted that she was proud of her career going "slowly, slowly but firmly".^[6] Her immediate goal was to earn enough money for building a private house for her parents and to provide her a regular income.^[7]

In 2000, Thu Minh sang a duet, "She's carefree", with musician Tran Tien, in his concert, Improvisative Tran Tien.^[8]

In 2001, she produced her first album Ước mơ (Dream), which featured her first hit single, "Nhớ anh" ("Missing you"). This was a cover of an original version by singer Ky Phuong. It achieved remarkable recognition, being voted as one of the top ten favourite songs of the year voted by the Làn Sóng Xanh radio show audience.

Her second album, Lời cuối (Last quote), released in 2003 was less successful. It featured largely classic Vietnamese hit songs that praised or mentioned patriotism, the fatherland, and love during war.

2004–2008: Album Heaven

With musician Vo Thien Thanh, Thu Minh released her third album, Thiên đàng (Heaven) in 2004. Consisting of three CDs, this dance-oriented album was a breakthrough. Her strong voice stood out among other Vietnamese dance-pop singers, on Vietnamese songs like "Bóng mây qua thềm", "Chuông gió"("Wind chime") and "Ngày của tôi" ("My day") and English hits "All by Myself", "Queen of the Night", and "Tell Him." She also created new versions of classic songs such as "60 năm cuộc đời" ("60 years of life"); "Cho em một ngày thôi" ("'Give me one day only"), a duet with duo with Vietnamese singer Thanh Lam; "Hoa sữa" ("Milkwood pine"); and "Xích lô" ("Cyclo").

That same year, Thu Minh established her own company, TM Solutions, for her artistic and business endeavours.

She always believed: "fame is not what makes me happiest, but artistic differences and uniqueness", thus, she sought to "cultivate and train herself for her own 'Thu Minh style', vocal technique and performance style".^[9] Thu Minh also genuinely said that the "frugal", "straight-forwarded, critical and perfectionism" in her music career, inherited from her mother, helped her bring the audience her best music performances.^[10]

After Heaven (Thiên đường), she released a series of albums: My Love (Tình em) (2005), What if (Nếu như) (2007), and The best of Thu Minh (2008) and I Do (2008).

2009–present: Dance-pop and her rise to popularity

By this point in her career, Thu Minh focused her music on the dance-pop genre, releasing the album Ruby – Sixth Sense. In 2010, she released the demo single "Đường cong" ("The curve").

In 2011, Body Language (Ngôn ngữ cơ thể) featured Nguyen Hai Phong and Nathan Lee was called "rich, rhythmic, youthful," a "breath of fresh air and practical contribution to the development of dance-pop in Vietnam." The album was nominated in the Artist of the Year category.^[11]

Thu Minh returned to prominence in 2010 with and in 2011, a pure-dance album titled Body language was released. This album contained 11 dance-pop songs which Thu Minh coordinated with two young musicians. Her music videos showed a more sexually provocative and flirtatious personality. The songs all required a high and weighty female voice to hit high notes and a wide range of vocals, flexibility, and strong control over changing singing voices as well as belting out notes. With this, Thu Minh has now become "a leading pioneer" who has been involved in quality music recordings in dance-pop of Vietnam. The latest album which featured 11 Dance-pop songs sold extremely well. It was one of 2011's five best albums selected and voted on by a group of prestigious composers and music producers, and readers of Thao & Van Hoa (Sports & Culture) newspaper.

From then on, "sexiness is my brand" she claimed.^[12] Thus, her performance style on stage changed to be more appropriate with dance-pop yet she claimed that her personality in her private life is a different story and unchanged. This new style brought many controversial opinions from the public. Some viewers objected to the innovation in the style of her music, but some had sympathy and support for her breakthrough move which has brought about a colorful style and a pioneering creative thinking in music industry. About this change, she told in the program Leo & U of the YanTV channel that this change stemmed from her changing her former conservative attitudes about her music career. She now wanted to share and bring her music closer to public tastes to lead them. In this genre, with seasoned experience and her powerful soprano C vocal, she is actually a pioneer in style of dance-pop music through her professional, powerful, technical, and emotional vocals and techniques. Despite being unhappy with the changes, the majority of audiences still highly value Thu Minh's career on her vocals and technical expertise.

The same year 2011, Thu Minh won a gold medal in the folk music category in the "ASEAN Golden Voice Festival 2010" competition with the performance of "Bóng cây Kơ-nia" and also won the prize of "Favourite Singer" in this competition.

Recently, on 12 November 2012, Thu Minh introduction demo of a single called "Love you only/ Yêu mình anh" on her Facebook. This song is the main soundtrack for movie "Cold Summer" which will be released in the late of 2012. Also, this is the first work in Vietnam of famous producer Dada, who have had long experience in producing movie soundtracks music for years in Singapore and the United States. The producer expressed a great impression with her voice and techniques so that he decided to change the entire structure and spirit of the song after two hours of draft recording.^[13]

Also, her album "Body Language" was received a mega mix by a famous producer/remixer/DJ named Robin Skouteris. This is a contribution for her music to be more visible to foreign audience as this video received national attention spreading-widely so that online news from other countries like India stated that she is "one of superstar of Vietnam and one of the best vocalist of Vietnam in many many genre"^[14]

On 24 November 2012, Thu Minh participated in Korean global concert M-Live MO.A (Most Amazing) in Vietnam to celebrate 20 years of relations between Korea and Vietnam. She shared her thoughts on it saying, "Korea is the place of the ′Miracle of Hangang′, which affected its industries, economy and technology, so its determination to develop its cultural industry also is very high compared to other countries. Only such cultural exchanges like MO.A for the 20th anniversary of ties between the countries will help them become true 20-year friends".^[15] In this concert, she performed her new single "Love you only/ Yêu mình anh" and her big hits from her album, Body Language, in the Mega-mix version by Robin Skouteris both for the first time on stage. The first song got impressive and enormous compliments on her extremely powerful high notes from the local and international audiences. Controversially, the Mega-mix part had sound technical problems that made her voice from micro a bit smaller and weaker than that of the first performance that was realised by live audiences and the press at the back or up stage. Thu Minh was upset because it was not as good as her expectation without blaming on anyone and refusing to talk more on this, yet as a singer of a firm stuff, she managed well on stage, performed at her best with enthusiasm and 'burned' the whole stage for it.^[16] The Vietnamese audience was excessively shouting out her name and singing along during her performances. Her performances still brought a true pride for Vietnam after Van Mai Huong's not outstanding performance as one of the two Vietnamese representatives in MO.A.^[17]

In 2012, she also covered iconic ballads of Whitney Houston and Celine Dion, including "I Will Always Love You"^[18] and "All by Myself"^[19][20]

Other appearances on media

In addition to singing, Thu Minh also participated in dancing and acting. In 2005, Thu Minh received an invitation for the role, named "Ai", in the series Tinh yeu con mai from its film director. Her character was a strong-willed woman who is poor and undergoes multiple jobs to survive, which suits Thu Minh's personality the most as the director mentioned as his reason to invite her.^[21]

In 2008, Thu Minh portraited one role of the soap opera named Lan and Diep on stage and received a warm welcome from the audiences.^[22][23]

In 2010–11, in spite of the failure of the series Anh chang vuot thoi gian resulting from a poor plot, the press highlighted that while all other experienced actors and actresses (Huynh Anh Tuan, Kim Hien, Hua Vi Van, Thuy Huong, Don Nguyen) were insulted for solely acting and reading quotes without emotions, Thu Minh – a singer-to-be-temporary-actress – was praised to be the only one being persuasive in her acting role.^[24]

At the end of 2011, Thu Minh also won first prize "Queen of Dancesport" in a Dancing with the Stars competition. Her Rumba and Freestyle routines were credited for her victory; they recorded the two highest scores in the show's history and were praised by the former dancesport couple Khanh Thi and Chi Anh. Thu Minh's dancing was praised for its beauty and technical accomplishments. Although she was considered to have an advantage due to her previous training in ballet, Thu Minh thought differently. She said what had been assumed as her strength was actually her weaknesses because ballet and dancesport are technically opposite in leg movements and standing poses, making her a beginner. This marks her first successful attempt and diversifying from a singing career.^[25]

Thu Minh declared that she considers dancesport as "lovers, still in love but could not see it again because of a fear for love blossoming". After Dancing With the Stars in 2011, Thu Minh had been "feeling the miss of its abrupt ending for a long time". It is said that Thu Minh led many of her fans and colleagues to respect and feel an empathy for her artistic performance and drastic efforts in each of her artistic fields, the Northern-originated singer has always been committed into a challenge and attempting to play her best in any role. Judge Khanh Thi mentioned Thu Minh as a hard-working candidate who was the only contestant not showing many "trifling skill" to put a cover on error routines like other candidates but attempting to show skillful techniques of dancesport. She mainly focused and boldly tried to imitate routines and style of a 'real' professional dancer throughout the competition.^[26]

In 2012, she became one of four judges for the The Voice of Vietnam.^[27]

On 13 January 2013, Huong Tram (top 4 of contestants The Voice of Vietnam from the Thu Minh team) was officially crowned as the champion of The Voice in Vietnam for the first season.

On January 14, 2013,Thu Minh determined that she needed to take some time off to take care of her family. She also confirmed that she would officially leave as coach the next season. However, she should still be available in an advisory role for the immediate future. Thu Minh will have returned to bench coach for the following season.^[28]

In 2015 and 2016, Thu Minh returned to Vietnamese television as a judge on Vietnam Idol, replacing Mỹ Tâm, who filled in her vacant chair on The Voice. She was described as a strict, but devoted and kind judge.

Thu Minh eventually returned to The Voice of Vietnam for its fourth season in 2017, and once again her final act, Ali Hoàng Dương, was crowned the winner. Thu Minh also became the first coach in the show's history to win twice.

Music controversies

Around 2003, the song entitled in "Phut giay dau" ("The first moment") in her Last Quote album has been preferred by many youngsters after appearing in a YoMost's advertisement for seasonal Valentine marketing. This song also is performed by Thu Minh in both English and Vietnamese. Many youngsters believe that the English version of song "The First Moment" which has spread widely on network belongs to singer Martina McBride. However, the information is quite biased and inaccurate since during Martina's entire music career, there is no existence of the song "The First Moment" performed by Martina in any live show, and in any album or single. Additionally, most of the links (that state Martina McBride sings this song) are apparently from Vietnam's IP and sites.